Never Enough Love

By John Lazano

Where "Catch me if you Can" meets "The Wolf of Wall Street" on the ocean

NEVER ENOUGH LOVE is the fascinating story of John Lazano, who grew up in a traditional New York Italian Catholic family, joined the Navy, married a prostitute, accidently made a nuclear submarine go in the wrong direction, dated a famous actress, sailed on over 350 cruises around the world, and lived multiple lives.

They say real life is better than fiction and that is definitely true here. John's story spans a 54-year period that takes readers on an adrenalin rush with each new adventure as they accompany him from an innocent beginning to creating a dream job where he was able to circumnavigate the globe, make millions of dollars, have affairs with more than 400 women and then in a twist of fate, lose it all.

Tragically losing his best friend at an early age had a profound impact on John causing him to live a life with no boundaries. This event set the stage for the stark realization; you only get one round and that none of this is a dress rehearsal. When your number is up, it's up.

John paid a heavy price for living a life like this and so did everyone else.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546242413

John Lazano

The author was inspired to live everyday like it was his last... and he did.

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© 2018 John Lazano. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/05/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4242-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4241-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905850

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Never Enough Love

An Amazing True-Life Story of Family, Traveling the World, Adventure, Romance, Deception & Consequences

By John Lazano

This book is dedicated in loving memory to Steven Brancale, whose short life inspired me to live mine to the fullest

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

PROLOGUE

Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, I couldn’t believe it was 2018. I was 65 years old and feeling reflective as I passed the digital billboards and magnificent hotels on the Strip. The Wynn, the Venetian, the Palazzo, the Mirage, Caesars Palace—was Celine Dion still performing at the Colosseum? I guess so, but I thought she’d retired after her husband had passed away. Apparently I was wrong.

The Bellagio with its spectacular, synchronized water show and all the other attractions—no matter how many times I drove up and down the Strip, this place never failed to amaze me. Even after living here for over 12 years, Las Vegas was in a never-ending state of transformation. There was always something new to do or a sensational attraction coming that would be exciting to anticipate. The last few years had been especially dramatic with all the new construction and now the addition of professional sports. The Golden Knights and soon the Las Vegas Raiders football team, including a fantastic new stadium—the city was exploding in all directions. This town was the last stop on the train for me.

As I passed the Mandalay Bay, my heart sank. How could anyone forget what happened on October 1, 2017? The mass shooting had left 58 dead and over 500 injured. It was a terrible tragedy that will always be remembered as one of the darkest days in Las Vegas history.

As I looked to my left, I saw the Little Chapel of the West, the church where Elvis and Ann-Margret got married at the end of Viva Las Vegas, back in 1963. It’s now a historical landmark and I have stood in its doorway many times, just to say I was right in the spot where Elvis married Ann-Margret. They probably should have gotten together in real life, but that’s another story.

I turned on the radio and was flipping around when I hit Sirius and Cousin Brucie came on the air. Bruce Morrow was a famous radio disc jockey from the early 1960s. When he was at WABC AM radio in New York, he and a fellow DJ named Murray the K (Kaufman) were the most important people in radio. Cousin Brucie was responsible for helping launch the Four Seasons and many other singing groups at that time, most coming from the New York metropolitan area. Murray the K had a show called the The Swingin’ Soiree, broadcasting from 1010 WINS, another popular station in New York, and he and Brucie had a competition going on. Murray was friends with the Beatles and had them on his radio show, first by telephone the morning after they arrived in the USA, then doing a live broadcast from the Plaza Hotel, where they were staying before their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Murray was referred to as the Fifth Beatle by George Harrison because of his long association and friendship with the group. Murray the K died in 1982 at the age of 60, but was considered to be the number one disc jockey on New York radio for a majority of the 1960s.

It was amazing to think that his main rival, Cousin Brucie, was still on the air at 82, spinning the oldies. His voice sounded the same as it did way back then.

Brucie came on the radio and said, "Cousins, let me tell ya a little story about our next song. Did you know that a struggling, unknown song writer named Jerry Fuller wrote ‘Travelin’ Man’ while waiting to pick up his wife from work back in 1961? He actually wrote the song by pounding it out on the dashboard of his car. He couldn’t play the guitar and wrote the words down on a paper napkin he had with him. His intention was to write the song for Sam Cooke. The next day he took the rough idea of the song into the studio, where he and Glen Campbell and a fellow named Dave Burgess recorded a demo of it. Jerry took it to Sam Cooke’s manager, J.W. Alexander, and asked him to listen to it. He said he would and that was the last Jerry heard of it, at least for a while.

"Sam Cooke’s manager listened to part of it, didn’t like it and decided to throw it in the trash can. In the next office, however, was Ricky Nelson’s bass player, Joe Osborn. Joe heard it through the wall and came around the corner and asked J.W. what had he just played. Could he hear it again? J.W. said it was in the trash and he could have it. Joe took the song to Ricky Nelson. Ricky loved it so much that he did a full recording of it using the Jordanaires as backup. Ricky had to ask Elvis Presley if he could use the Jordanaires, who were his primary backup group.

"They made a few minor changes and then called Jerry Fuller. Jerry had never heard of Joe Osborn and was completely surprised he had taken the discarded record to Ricky Nelson and he had re-recorded it. They asked Jerry if he had any more songs. He said he had about eighty of them, then went on to write several of Rick Nelson’s most famous hits, ‘Young World’ and ‘It’s up to You,’ just to name a few. From the trash pail to a national hit! Can you imagine the odds of that happening? This was the true meaning of the word ‘serendipity.’

"‘Travelin’ Man’ went Number One six weeks after its release during May of 1961 and Jerry Fuller went on to become a sought—after composer and songwriter with many top 20 hits under his belt.

Shortly thereafter, Ozzie Nelson, Ricky’s dad, got the idea to superimpose travel backgrounds into the performance while Rick was playing. Thus, the first music video was created. This clip was just put into the Smithsonian as the first official music video made in history! Now, let’s play ‘Travelin’ Man’ for all my cousins…

The song came on and I couldn’t believe just how influential it had been and what an impact it had had on my life. It was uncanny…

I began to think back to where I had come from and everything that had happened—boy, what an incredible journey it had been! Even now, as I look back after everything that occurred, I’m not sure how it will end up. I can only tell you what took place and yes, it’s all true!

The names have been changed to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty…and that includes me…

CHAPTER 1

I suppose being from the Bronx had its advantages, from the famous restaurants, delicatessens, flower shops and Italian bakeries on Arthur Avenue, to the colorful books that have been written and movies that have been made about the gangsters, singing groups, and entertainers that grew up there. For those who don’t know, Arthur Avenue was the Park Avenue of the Bronx in those days. I was too young to know any better and these were only stories I heard at family gatherings years after we moved away. It seemed that every Italian family had a member they claimed was in the mafia or had a close connection to someone who was. The family bragged about it. It basically meant, don’t anybody mess with us, or the boys would take care of you. To this day, I still question if any of this was true.

There was also a relative who was an undertaker and a cousin who was gay. The gay cousin’s sexual proclivity was kept a family secret until he was old enough to move away. In later years if his name ever did come up, my aunt and uncle would say he was doing fine and there was no more discussion after that.

In my family it was Uncle George, who supposedly was connected to the mob in the 1930s. As the story goes, my aunt married him when she was 18 and he was 45. She did it so the family would not starve during the Great Depression. Apparently he was abusive to my aunt and ran prostitutes and booze during prohibition. From what my mother told me, my aunt put up with it because they always had food, gifts for Christmas, and never had to go on Home Relief, which was like welfare as we know it today. This was a big deal in those days. In the late 50s when we went to my aunt’s apartment to eat, Uncle George was there, sitting at the head of the table very quietly. He would say grace and if someone asked him what he did when he worked, he said he was a barber. When he died, they gave a long eulogy in church about what a wonderful man he had been in his life. Oh, really?

Frankie Oreo—he was the undertaker. If anyone died, the family called Cousin Frankie. He picked up the body, embalmed it, then either brought it back to the house to be laid out in the living room, or to his funeral parlor in Harlem for the viewing. He also made arrangements for the flowers, limos, and even the food after the funeral. He had the real racket going on. After he died, his daughter took over, eventually selling out to a large chain of funeral homes with multiple locations throughout the city. When Frankie was alive, he always said everyone was going to die sooner or later, so he and his daughter would never run out of customers. The rumor was that she got several million dollars for the business, retired, and moved to Florida. I guess he was right!

I came screaming into this world at Jacobi Hospital on Pelham Parkway in November of 1952. I had the standard ten fingers and ten toes, although my father did tell me that when he first saw me, my head looked like a stretched out sausage and didn’t look normal. My poor mother suffered in labor for 14 hours, until they decided to use forceps to get me out, thus explaining the elongated noggin. Every time she told the story about giving birth to me, it included a dissertation about the forceps, her episiotomy, the 28 stitches she needed, and then how she sat in a sitz bath for three weeks healing up. Over the years, I heard this same story in detail, hundreds of times until she died. It was her way of telling me and anyone else who would listen, what she had to go through for her one and only prodigal son. This is how lifelong Italian Guilt begins—with forceps, an episiotomy, 28 stitches, and a sitz bath! It turns an Italian son into an indentured servant to his mother for the rest of his life. If you are from an Italian family, you know exactly what I mean…

My parents were first generation Americans, born to poor Italian immigrants that came right off the boat from the old country. Word got back to the family in Italy that the streets of New York were lined with gold. The thought of a different world, riches and a new life, prompted many of them to buy one-way ocean liner tickets to the United States, in what was known as steerage class to get across the ocean. This was a horrible seven- to ten-day voyage in the bottom of the ship.

Many of the travelers left with only the clothes on their backs and a small bag. Many had a sponsor or someone who they would live with, but many came by themselves and weren’t sure where they would end up. It took guts, and my relatives were all part of this mass migration from Europe to America.

My grandmother Carmella and her sister Zitzi made the voyage and were the first ones that did. They could not speak a word of English, but my great-grandparents sent them anyway. When they arrived they were processed through Ellis Island, and then went to live with a cousin in Harlem, who had already been in America for over ten years. Who knows if they were really cousins or not? Everyone was called cousin. They both became seamstresses and eventually my grandmother married a barber and had eight children, while Zitzi never married and lived with my grandparents until she died. That was the way it was in those days.

These New York melting pots were mainly Italian, Irish, and Jewish. The Irish and Italians did the manual labor such as bricklaying and construction, while many of the Jewish people began to work in the garment industry. In spite of the difficult and uncomfortable passage they made coming to the United States, they all managed to settle down, have families and create the ethnic neighborhoods that New York City and its five boroughs are famous for.

After World War II ended, my mother and father—like many couples—were matched up and, after a few months of supervised dating, were married in a traditional Italian wedding. My mother was the youngest of eight children and the baby in her family. Like all women from that era, she was a virgin when she got married and my father was the only man she was ever with. As a matter of fact, she was so modest that other than giving birth to my sister and me, she would never go to an OB/GYN or get a pap smear during her entire life because at that time the doctors were all men.

When my parents moved out after living with my grandmother for four years in Harlem, they settled in the Bronx and lived off Pelham Parkway, which at the time was considered to be an upscale neighborhood. For my mother, getting married and leaving home was a big deal, but moving out of the apartment to the Bronx was traumatic! Eventually her whole family followed her and ended up on White Plains Road, which was not far away.

I was told when I was a baby, my father would walk me in the stroller around the neighborhood accompanied by Jake LaMotta the famous boxer, portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the movie Raging Bull. My parents moved in right next door to him and didn’t even know it. Dad would see him in his backyard and go over and watch him practice punching the bag.

In those days, if you were Italian and lived next to another Italian, you became friends. Jake and dad became fast friends and on weekends would go horseback riding at the stables in the middle of Pelham Parkway and took me along because I liked to pet the horses.

Jake and his family moved away not too long after we moved in. He was becoming more famous and you know how it goes with fame and fortune.

Pelham Parkway was a beautiful, tree-lined boulevard and in the Bronx at that time, it was like being in the country. I recall as a child whenever we went back to visit the old neighborhood in the springtime it was always sunny, no smog, with the scent of flowers and horse manure that you could smell when the wind blew in the right direction.

A little before I turned two, we moved out to Bellmore, Long Island, where we started our middle-class life in postwar, suburban America. Many young couples living in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens were making their way out of the city to give their children a new life and my parents were part of that pilgrimage out to the new suburbs.

The Southern State Parkway was moving east, automobiles were improving and service on the Long Island Railroad in and out of the city was becoming more reliable, so why not? Levitt & Sons started the first tract home community in the late 1940s, called Levittown, where a GI could purchase a home for $5995 and get a mortgage for it on the newly established GI Bill.

My mother’s family, back on White Plains Road, were in tears at the thought of her moving away again, but my father was determined to get us out to the country to give us a better life. He managed to get a job with a printing company, eventually joining the Amalgamated Lithographers of America. Now he was a union man and would always have a job with benefits and could never get fired.

He worked his way up from being paper handler to pressman, and then got into management, which meant more money for our family. All the printing shops were located in the city and he took the Long Island Railroad from the Bellmore Station into Manhattan every day, never missing a day of work for years. Even in the blizzard of 1956, he walked three miles to the train station to be on time. He made it there, but the train never arrived and he walked back home.

Something I will never forget was when I was three years old. We would go to the train station every Sunday to purchase his weekly ticket. It was October of 1955 and the last of the great steam engines that the Long Island Railroad used was going to come through the station for the final time and he wanted me to see it. I looked down the tracks from the platform and saw the plume of smoke coming down the tracks. It scared the hell out of me, so much so, that I ran and hid in the station until it passed and didn’t see a thing. I only remember feeling the ground shake as the thunderous locomotive passed through the station. It felt and seemed like a giant fire-breathing dragon to me as a young child.

That same month and year, my sister Debbie was born in Bay Shore at Southside Hospital. Suddenly, our little Cape Cod house seemed pretty small. My sister and I had to share a room and when she woke up screaming, so did I. I remember her in the carriage, with me holding my mother’s one free hand, while we walked three blocks to the grocery store on Jerusalem Ave.

Like all mothers during this era, she was a stay-at-home mom who got up early, made my father breakfast before he left for the train station at 4:30 AM every morning and took care of my sister and me all day. She had food on the table for him when he came through the door dead tired, smelling of printer’s ink, every evening at 7:30 PM.

When he came in, I hugged him with his coat still on and he smelled just like New York City. Anyone from New York knows the unmistakable scent that the city has and how it sticks to your clothing. It was cold, a little smoky, and that combined with the smell of the ink made the scent very distinctive. His fingernails were always dirty from working with ink all day, and every Saturday he made sure he scrubbed them clean for the weekend.

From the time I was four, I remember mother’s homemade Italian sauce that she’d slave over from five in the morning until it was